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Delfina Delettrez Fendi Shows Her Jewelry in the U.S. for the First Time

Delfina Delettrez Fendi's fascination with the human body is where it all began. "I started to do two years ago the eyes, but more like cartoon eyes. They were like reptiles, yes? With enamel," said Fendi, a lithe, 22-year-old member of the Italian fashion family. She and a few of her friends and admirers had gathered to toast her new jewelry collection at Opening Ceremony, the hip clothing boutique on Howard Street in downtown Manhattan.

"And then I tried to do robotic eyes," Fendi went on to say, motioning to a tiny, diamond-and-emerald-encrusted ring that did, in fact, look very much like a robotic eye. "And from the eyes I started to do the mouth, the nose, then strange faces. Hands. I love the hands. I am obsessed with hands, because I hate mine, so I like to reproduce beautiful hands," she said, stroking her own fingers.

Among the bejeweled items on display at Opening Ceremony was a cuff ($2,610) fashioned to look like a vampire's fangs—complete with faux blood dripping down the white-enamel canines. "You have to play with the jewels," said Fendi, who splits her time between Rome and Paris (she had been to New York only twice before). "Now people don't want to have jewels that are shiny and don't want to have the big diamonds. They want to have the jewels that seem fake! But you just know it's real. It seems like a toy."Humberto Leon, the co-owner of Opening Ceremony, who just opened his third store in Japan, said he thinks Fendi's jewelry, which now comprises five collections, appeals to a buyer's attraction to narrative and nostalgia. "She tells these really kind of elaborate stories," Leon said, motioning about the space. Fendi's anatomically inspired pieces had been stacked upon white lacquer pedestals near the front of the store. "She has a really kind of democratic approach to her jewelry," he continued. "Sometimes you want the luxury, and sometimes you want a fun piece that tells the same story."

Asked to elaborate on the collection's import, Leon, who was introduced to Fendi in Paris, pointed to a series of open boxes containing rings attached to mini silver pinky fingers placed neatly beside bottles of red nail polish. The accessory retails for $400 and allows the owner to paint the silver nail. The more expensive version, encrusted with diamonds and rubies, is not meant to be painted with polish. After all, "It cost €11,000," said a woman standing near Fendi, whom the designer described as "my commercial." Her commercial added: "Sorry, I only know euros."

The young designer's aunt, Fe Fendi, was sitting on a stool in a fitting room beside Paola Fendi, who had just flown in from Rome for the occasion. "She's so talented," Fe purred. "And [she] really has a lot of personality. You can see she has her [own] style. And that is difficult in the fashion world." Then she turned to Paola, who, sporting a razor-sharp gray bob and flowing black garments, began whispering through scarlet lips in Italian. "I'm translating you," Fe explained, before revealing the gist of what she had just heard. "Age is a relative thing. It's what you feel, not what you are. And the mentality—whimsical, sometimes, no?"

Partygoer and publicist Bonnie Morrison, a 34-year-old native of San Francisco, had a slightly different take on Fendi's collection. "It's so weird—these weird fantasy pieces," Morrison said. "And the scale of them! It's like fine jewelry, but it's kind of fever-dream-like. I love how bold it is. It's all kind of rock ’n’ roll." Morrison thought that people would buy the jewelry because of the surge in popularity of young social figures such as Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, the daughter of French Vogue editor Carine;Camilla Al Fayed, the daughter of Harrods owner Mohamed; and billionaire Greek shipping heiress Eugenie Niarchos. "These jet-set people who are very rock ’n’ roll, very dark, and not at all what you think of the conventional jet-set-princess type," Morrison added, before taking off to wander the space in a fuzzy black vest, men's gold Rolex watch, and gray jeans.

Before heading to dinner with friends, Fendi mused on the apparent rise in playful schadenfreude (for example, the new Tim Burton exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art). "I do my skulls, my Dracula teeth with blood, but they seem [like] toys. They seem fake," Fendi said. "They're funny, so it's a way to maybe laugh about all these dark things."